It is funny how the lyrics of an old
hymn like this linger deep in the memory, and seem to retain a
certain power to inspire and uplift, long after thee has
ceased to exist as an object of any kind of religious belief.

Maybe the words of the hymn continue to
hold meaning in an irreligious heart and mind because the dharma whose praises the heart wishes to sing is that very law by which all things wither and perish –
as described, totally irreligiously, by the 2nd law of
thermodynamics. The 2nd law might truly be the Almighty
One.

The connection of these musings with my reading of
today's verse, lest I seem to be digressing too far, is that in the
old days lovers of Aśvaghoṣa must have memorized not only
individual verses, as I generally do, just for a day at a time, and not only whole
cantos. People must have memorized the whole epic poem of 28 cantos so that they could -- in the days before TV and radio provided endless hours of entertainment -- recite the whole thing. I mean they would have been able to bring the whole thing out of deep storage, from that part of the brain where hymns sang long ago are remembered.

The present Canto is a long one, with 121 verses. So memorizing these
first eight verses, less than one fifteenth of one canto, is nothing
to write home about. But when I did commit these opening verses to
memory and practise reciting them from memory, I realized how much of
an aid to the memory it must have been all those years ago to see the
underlying logical progression, especially when that progression
falls neatly into four phases.

Thus, in the present series of four
verses (i.e. the first four verses of Arāḍa's opening speech), I read

BC12.5 as having to do with a thesis, namely the aim of breaking
free;

BC12.6 as representing an anti-thesis,
which opposes the hippy ideal with the traditional virtues of
steadfastness and wisdom;

BC12.7 as describing what is not a
wonder, what in other words is as ordinary as digging up a stone in a
vegetable patch;

and today's verse expressing what is
a wonder, i.e., something transcendent.

Talking of transcendence, for an ordinary young bloke such as I
was at the bodhisattva's age of 29, to transcend family life in the
sense of living as a celibate monk was not difficult. It was
out-and-out impossible.

But even for one who fails to walk the
royal road of a bhikṣu who has cut the fetters of emotional
attachment, I venture to submit, transcendence can still be nailed,
by the simple act of sitting in lotus. That is the message of Dogen's
Fukan-zazengi.

That is mainly what
fuelled me for the 13 years I lived in Japan – the sense that here
was something truly extra-ordinary, and here was a teacher whose
mission, which I could be part of, was to make this extra-ordinary
something accessible to “all people in the world!”

Alexander work has
caused me often to reflect that my sense in those days was very faulty. What is truly
extraordinary, I have come to think, is what happens in those rare
moments when one allows sitting in lotus to be not the
doing of anything.

Any way up, when we read
today's verse as expressive of transcendence, we are caused to reconsider what kind of
transcendence the 4th pāda might be suggesting.

On the face of it, the 2nd and 4th
pādas of today's verse, both being in the locative case, naturally
go together. Hence

EBC: that
thou... in life's fresh prime, set in the open field of the world's
enjoyments;

EHJ: that you, who are in the flush of
youth and are placed in the pasture-ground of sensory pleasures;

PO: that you, while still a young man, living in the thick of
sensual pleasures.

But to translate like that might be to
obscure a progression through four phases within the four pādas of
the verse, whereby

the 1st pāda is what I
deem to be a wonder;

the 2nd pāda is objective
fact – a matter of 29 years and however many months;

the 3rd pāda describes a
bodhisattva's action;

and the 4th pāda suggests
something transcendent.

Ostensibly, then the 4th
pāda goes with the 2nd pāda. But as an expression of the
fourth phase, the 4th pāda goes beyond the 2nd
pāda, and at the same time includes all the first three pādas.

As such the 4th pāda is
difficult to translate.

It could be read as referring back to life in
the palace, when the young prince, like a frisky young bull set in
grassy cow-filled pastures, was living in a domain of sensory
enticements. In that case the 4th pāda and the 2nd
pāda are naturally translated together – something like “that
you, in the flush of youth, while dwelling in the domain of sensory
enticements,...”

But the 4th pāda can also
be read as suggestive of the kind of transcendence that a Chinese Zen
Master expressed when a monk wanted to ask him about something truly
extra-ordinary.

“What is the mind of an Old
Buddha?” the monk inquired.

And the Old Buddha, continuing to dwell nowhere but in the very thick of sense-objects, replied: Fences,
walls, tiles and pebbles.

VOCABULARY

idam
(nom. sg. n.): this

me
(gen. sg.): for/to me

matam
(nom. sg. n.): mfn. thought, considered

āścaryam
n. a wonder , miracle , marvel , prodigy; surprise

nave
(loc. sg. n.): mfn. new, fresh, young

vayasi
(loc. sg.): n. vigorous age , youth , prime of life , any period of
life , age

viṣaya-gocare (loc. sg. m.): in the
open field of the world's enjoyments (EBC); in the pasture-ground of
sensory pleasures (EHJ); in the thick of sensual pleasures (PO).

viṣaya:
m. realm, object, object of sense ; anything perceptible by the
senses , any object of affection or concern or attention , any
special worldly object or aim or matter or business , (pl.) sensual
enjoyments , sensuality

gocara:
m. pasture ground for cattle ; range , field for action , abode ,
dwelling-place , district (esp. ifc. " abiding in , relating to
" ; " offering range or field or scope for action , within
the range of , accessible , attainable , within the power ") ;
the range of the organs of sense , object of sense , anything
perceptible by the senses , esp. the range of the eye (e.g.
locana-gocaraṁ- √yā , to come within range of the eye , become
visible)